In a statement issued at the time in 2010,Gosling said:“You have to question a cinematic culture which preaches artistic expression,and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society,which tries to control how women are depicted on screen.
“The MPAA is okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes,but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario,which is both complicit and complex. It’s misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman’s sexual presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than this film.”
Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine.
In the late 1980s and early ’90s,a spate of Hollywood films did show women having sex and enjoying themselves,but they were all femme fatale plots. The female protagonists are sexual,empowered and deranged - after sex,they become obsessed and want to kill their partners;thinkFatal Attraction andBasic Instinct.
Wilde referencedFatal Attraction as one of the inspirations for her latest film,alongsideIndecent Proposal,saying those movies are “really sexy,in a grown-up way”.
However,they still only featured female sexuality as part of a messier,darker narrative,according to Lumby.
“The bunny boiler inFatal Attraction,the ice pick inBasic Instinct: often when women have been portrayed in Hollywood movies as having sexual agency,there has to be something lurking inside them that’s coming[to get] men.”
Sydney-based visual artist Julie Rrap often uses her naked body in her work. She says it’s interesting to think that all those big studios are run by male bosses,“that’s always the controlling temperature really”.
“Not even just in terms of women and sex but you often hear directors who we would regard as really significant filmmakers talking about the restrictions that are placed on them. I don’t think there are any surprises there,that in Hollywood they are just interested in popular consumption.”
To her mind,it makes sense that Hollywood would err on the side of caution rather than anything radical. The absence of women having sex from mainstream offerings leads her to think about the need for a broader conversation about the place of pleasure,which is not necessarily part of sex education.
ACMI curator Julia Murphy says throughout the history of the Hollywood studio system,the representation of women on screen has generally been defined by stereotypes,limited sexual expression,and the male gaze. “When women are involved in the financial and creative process of screen production,we see more realistic and less conservative portrayals of intimacy on screen,” she says.
The Hays Code,which decreed what could and could not be featured in films coming out of the famous Los Angeles studios for many years,might still have a hangover effect. Its prescriptive,old-school notions were a backlash against a time of women’s liberation and societal freedom.
According to ACMI curator Chelsey O’Brien,the 1920s were a super-racy time in Hollywood. Films were beginning to mature and deal with adult content. “They were sort of racy and projected images of women in power and making their own choices. There were off-screen stories of drugs and alcohol and partying and overindulgence and then the industry was rocked by really huge scandals ... all of these things brought really widespread condemnation from religious,civic and political organisations. Many felt that the movie industry was really morally questionable so there was all this political pressure.”
The Hays Code was a self-imposed industry set of guidelines for all the motion pictures that were released between 1934 and 1968,says O’Brien. “The code prohibited profanity,suggestive nudity,graphic or realistic violence,sexual persuasions and rape. It had rules around the use of crime,costume,dance,religion,national sentiment and morality,” she says.
“And according to the code – even within the limits of pure love or realistic love – certain facts have been regarded as outside the limits of safe presentation. So basically,this means we have a whole lot of married couples sleeping in separate beds for at least 20 years.”
Arthouse cinema and indeed European cinema is much more in keeping with the times;the exquisite French dramaBetty Blue from 1996 is one memorable example,with an unforgettable opening scene. In streaming land,it’s a very different picture as well:Outlander andBridgerton are two recent shows that feature quite a bit of sex.
In 1973,British feminist film writer Laura Mulvey wrote a seminal essay called “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”,which explored how mainstream films appealed to a male gaze - a term she coined - because the industry was dominated by men who,inevitably,constructed representations of women from a masculine point of view. All these years on,that continues to hold true,in Hollywood at least,and it seems likely to do so until more stories are written and directed by women.
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